Okay, so I signed up for the Amazon Associates program, mostly because I’m always steering traffic through there anyway, and this way I can get a percentage back. Plus I’m getting over 50,000 hits a month on this blog, I figured I might make enough back in Amazon gift cards to download a song or something.

It gives you HTML to copy and paste, which is supposed to show up as a groovy little button. Over on the left of this post you can see where I put in a text box and pasted in the HTML for links to all my novels. However it just shows up as weird text, though if you click on it, it takes you to a page that shows the button, that you can then click on to go to Amazon.

So how do I make it just show the nifty little buttons?

And yes, I am mostly computer illiterate. But I probably shoot better than you do so it evens out.

I don’t think you can make the nifty amazon buttons at wordpress.com; they don’t let you do fancy stuff in the widgets or on the page because they want you to pay for the upgraded version.

You could add a new link category and just make a blogroll type widget with book titles, and have the links your amazon affiliates link, though. It won’t have a nifty picture, but you’ll still get credit for the clicks.

No, it’s not javascript and you’re using the correct text box. The problem is that your “special characters” got munged somehow in the copy/paste.

I’m pasting corrected code below, but if this doesn’t work, here’s how to fix it:

1) As stated, your links show up as weird text, but if you click them, it takes you to the page that shows the button.
2) For each link, click the link to get to the page that shows you the button.
3) Copy the URL out of the URL bar in your browser window, and then paste it between the > and < for that line in WordPress text box. (the link code format is THIS IS THE TEXT/BUTTON YOU WANT TO SEE. The href”bla” part is working, that’s where you go to when you click a link; it’s the part where THIS IS THE TEXT YOU SEE that is screwed up and you are trying to replace it in this step.

So if the WordPress comment form doesn’t “sanitize” what I’m pasting below, you might be able to copy & paste it into your text box.

The text box may be a problem, but most definitely a problem is the code (viewed through the handy app Firebug) shows absolutely no graphics. You may have copied the wrong dohicky from the Associates popup. When I look at mine, there is a bit that starts <iframe src="http (and so on).

Larry, if you signed up for WordPress.com (the free WP hosted stuff) you most likely can’t do it. I’ve been talking to a developer with WP about just this thing on my blog and he stated that the .com sites really don’t support it. He hasn’t dug too deep to see if there’s a way to get around it, but he’s not aware of any.

If you are buying server space from someone like GoDaddy or the like or if you have a self installed version of WordPress on a server in your house/office/etc, you should be able to do it. I have a suspicion though that you’re using WordPress.com to host your site.

If you’re using a ‘self hosted’ (that means bought server space on GoDaddy, etc) then they may not have the correct plugin installed to do it.

I’ll hit the WP dev up again and see if he’s got any more information.

The best way I’ve found, Larry, is to switch over to html and insert the code there, then switch back to visual before posting. Of course, it wants to post the entire title of the book for you, so don’t do the “highlight/insert link” method you’d usually do.

About the Author

Larry Correia is the award winning, New York Times bestselling author of the Monster Hunter International Series, the Grimnoir Chronicles, and the Dead Six thrillers.
All of my books are available in eBook format from the Kindle store or at Baen.com, and in audiobook on Audible.com.
I'm on Facebook or follow me on Twitter at @monsterhunter45.